


people always say you bring out the worst in me (like it's a bad thing)

by TrivialPursuit



Category: Archer (Cartoon)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon-Typical Racism, Cheryl's Gross Brother Cecil, Codependency, F/M, Gen, If you want - Freeform, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Racism, Requited Love?, Sea Tunt, Second Person, Sibling Incest, The Author Regrets Everything, Unrequited Love?, it's all very ambiguous, mentions of real people, who is very sad and confused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 08:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5085730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrivialPursuit/pseuds/TrivialPursuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Until after you meet Tiffy, your sister is your whole world.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Cecil Tunt, before he was her gross brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	people always say you bring out the worst in me (like it's a bad thing)

**Author's Note:**

> I do not like the title, so maybe I will change it, if I come up with something better, otherwise, whatever.  
> Gloria Morgan was a real person, and she did have a family member who participated in the Civil War. Otherwise, everything is totally made up. She's probably very anachronistic, although considering how anachronistic Archer is, I figured that was acceptable.

When you are young, your sister terrifies you. This is what you will tell your therapist (the best in the country, but absolutely nothing less would do for a Tunt) twenty years later. This will be only half a lie. You will still be terrified of her.

She is, you think (eight years old and watching the gazebo be reduced to ashes), some pagan goddess of an earlier age, one who accepts her tribute in blood and human sacrifice as her worshippers dance around roaring bonfires, naked and screaming. But her worshippers have fled her in favour of gods who demand less, who are not capricious and cruel in their favour, who do not rip those who love them best to pieces. This is why every Sunday you put on a suit and Mummy combs your hair and the four of you - Father, Mummy, your sister, and you - got to church and listen to Father Talbot warn in his stentorian quaver about the sins of the flesh and the hellfire that awaits those who transgress.

You think this is why she burns down the gazebo, because the part of her that remembers when men flung themselves onto bonfires for love of her demands it.

~

  
Your sister is different from other children, but you do not know that until you are seventeen and Gloria Morgan won't invite your sister to her debutante ball, even though the Tunts are more important than the Morgans can ever hope to be. The Morgans should be tripping over themselves to have a Tunt at their daughter's coming-out and the fact that they're not makes you do what you always do when you are unsure; ask Mummy.

'Well darling,' Mummy says, pulling you up onto her lap, though you are much to big, and running her fingers through your hair, 'your sister is different from the other girls; she's more beautiful and vivacious than Gloria Morgan ever could be, with her hideous nose and dry cunt. They're just jealous of us, after all, jealous and petty because even though their side won the War Between States, we're still better than they ever will be. Who do they think they are, these Morgans, who're just negro-lovers scraped up from the bottom of the Union Army barrel, cutting a Tunt? What right do they have to act as if my daughter was somehow lesser than theirs?!' As Mummy says this her voice gets uncomfortably shrill, spittle spattering your cheek, her hand gripping painfully at your hair. You do not try to pull away because experience has taught you that will only make it worse. Right now her anger is directed towards the Morgans, relatively safe a few blocks away in their townhouse, but if you draw her attention now that will also draw her ire.

You do not know much about Other People (people who are not Tunts), but you do not think jealousy explains the way Gloria's eyes get wide and bulging while her voice seems to get lost in gasping and gurgled breathing whenever your sister gets near. She reminds you of your grandfather's horse, the time he shot that stable boy for using the wrong kind of polish on the tack, wide-eyed and terrified.

When your sister comes out your mother invites everyone, Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, Astors, Kennedys, Bouviers, and Beales. There are no Morgans; the Morgans, your mother tells everyone, are trash.

Everybody says how beautiful your sister is, in her pale pink dress with big white lilies in her hair, with some of the family jewels glittering around her neck. But you think it is horrible, unnatural. Your sister, you know, would be radiant in a paper bag, but to see her in the pastels of a little girl is wrong to you in some deep part of you that you cannot explain or reason with. Your sister should be dressed in the skin of her enemies, decorated with jewelry made of their bones and entrails, hair streaming down her back like that picture you saw in your textbook of Boudicca with her barbarian hoards at her back.

That night at least five of the most eligible boys on the east coast fall wildly in love with your sister, offering diamonds, property, power, anything she desired. Instead she takes their hearts and crushes them, leaving all the boys afraid and adoring.

You feel something twist inside you, staring at those boys, you wonder if, for the first time, you truly know what it is to hate.

 

~

  
You do not grow up around other children. It is just your sister and you, plus the occasional cousin, in that big house on Fifth Avenue. Your parents insulate you from the other children with nannies, governesses, and tutors who never stay for long and always seem a bit wild about the eyes. You are not sure if this is for your sister's protection or the world's.

You do not realize how utterly strange this sooner because, until after you meet Tiffy, your sister is your whole world. When you are thirteen your father decides that you should be sent to boarding school. It is the longest three months of your life, an unending torture that leaves you unsure and alone, surrounded by people as you never have been before, grasping for ways to define yourself without her. It is the first time you have been separated from your sister for more than a weekend and by the time Chirstmas break arrives, in a rare showing of defiance, you put your foot down. You will not return.

(Your sister says nothing but for the first time in years does not protest when you to creep into her room and curl yourself around her, clinging to her like a life preserver.)

You will find it ironic then, when, seven years later, you reject Columbia and Harvard and Yale and every other school remotely close to New York, worthy or not of educating a Tunt for Stanford, far away from everything you've ever known. Your mother only glares and sneers about ungrateful offspring and how she should have murdered you the day you were born around the rim of her martini glass. Your sister won't even be in the same room as you, disappearing just as you enter and somehow this is worse.

Despite the twisting guilt that constantly sits in the pit of your stomach like a lead weight, Stanford is the freest you've ever felt. Your mother always said California was a godless place and you think she might have been right; nobody seems to care about anything that your mother says a Tunt should worship. They do not care that your money is older than the state of California, only that you have money. They do not want to simply give money to charities, they have Causes that they fight for with a passion you have never previously known, a passion you cannot find within yourself. They have no idea of what it means to be a Tunt and therefore no expectations of who you should be, something which you have never before experienced. It is liberating and you do not know what to do with yourself, overwhelmed by the emotions that seem to run on a constant high but unable to fully participate. Until you meet Tiffy.

Tiffy is like no one you've ever met before, dressed in itchy hemp dresses and strands of wooden beads, full of fiery passion for peace and love and the environment. She stands rigidly in front of the administration building protesting, a sign held stiffly in her hands and she hurls poignant insults at passing faculty. She is strange and foreign, exemplifying everything you love about California and you fall in love instantly.

Your sister does not like Tiffy. You are not sure why this surprises you, but it does and you feel as if you cannot breathe. They attack each other constantly, sniping across the dinner table as Mummy watches gleefully, a martini clutched in her hands. For some reason Mummy adores these matches, treating them more like Wimbledon than violent arguments between her daughter and son's girlfriend. Father says nothing, hiding behind his newspaper, though you know he does not like Tiffy, if only because your sister has always been his favourite child.

~

You remember when you were little and you were afraid of your father, not in the same way you were ever afraid of your sister, but you could never find yourself easy around him. When he came home from long trips she would dash down the stairs and fling herself upon him, peppering his face with kisses and demanding the presents he brought her. Your father would always laugh and tell George to take the presents for the young mistress out of his bags. The gifts would always be numerous and expensive and your sister would always preen in delight, modelling each new gift before tossing in aside in favour of the next one.

After your sister left, trailed by some servants carrying her presents your father would turn to you and clap his hand on your shoulder, squeezing almost painfully. 'Stick with your sister, she has the brilliance of a Tunt, but people like us need people like you to keep us grounded. Your mother does that for me and you must do it for her.' You would nod solemnly, not quite understanding but knowing that it was this, not complaints about lack of presents, that your father wanted from you.

Later than, when you bring Tiffy home that first time, your father stares at you and heaves a sigh of disappointment. 'I asked you one simple thing; why couldn't you do as I ask?' Before turning back to his newspaper and refusing to acknowledged you for the rest of your stay.

~

The next year you go to Tiffy's family and their blandness enthralls you; the way Tiffy's mother does not scream or laugh or cackle; how her father speaks; how there is no opposing emotions simmering under a flawless surface. You do not understand the way they are nothing like anything you have ever experienced before. You look at them as you did when grandfather took you to the circus and you saw the clowns and tightrope walkers and all these strange people that you cannot imagine to be real and exist in any world you have ever known.

You yearn to tell your sister about them, the way you told her about the circus, about the clowns and acrobats and how strange it all was. You even pick up the phone, but you know she will not answer.


End file.
